The Copy
by itsalltalk
Summary: The Human Doctor enlists the help of Cobb's team, wanting them to do inception on his own brain. He finds it difficult to reconcile his current situation as a clone with his "former life" as the Doctor-he wants to believe he is real.
1. Chapter 1: Convincing Myself

**The Copy**

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><p>Author's Note: This was inspired by the 30 Days of Summer Break Doctor Who that's going on at tumblr. I wrote a short scene crossing over Inception and Doctor Who, and I decided to write out the whole story. Please read and review. Thanks!<p>

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><p>Chapter 1: Convincing Myself<p>

The tall, lean man with a face that reflected sadness through all of his features stepped into the Parisian warehouse. He wore a suit that would have fit in perfectly in Arthur's dreams of opulent ballrooms and dinner parties that lasted far into the night. He gazed at the inception team.

"How the hell did you get in here?" Cobb demanded, hopping off the warehouse table and reaching for his gun.

"My name is John Smith," the man introduced himself, pulling at the collar of his jacket. "I used to be someone else. Once. Well, that's not entirely true, is it? I was never that person."

Arthur cocked his gun, too, holding it by his side. Although this man looked clean-shaven and presentable, his words were almost insane. "Did you want something, Mr. Smith?"

"Yes, well. I need all of you to go in here." He paused and tapped the side of his head. "I rather suspect it might be difficult, but I need to convince myself of something."

"If you already have the idea, it's impossible for us to plant it," Cobb insisted.

"I did impossible things every day. And so do you, I heard." John Smith stared down the leader of the group. "I have never begged for anything as long as I've lived. And let me assure you, it's been a very, very long time. But I wasn't human then. _I___ need you to try___._"

John Smith reached out a hand to the group leader, and, before Cobb realized what he was doing, closed his hand around the other man's.

"Right then!" the tall man said, snapping his fingers together and straightening, as if the forlorn man of just minutes ago was a mere fabrication.

Cobb glared at him, suspicious. "So what do you need us to try?"

"Well, it's just that I'm not quite real. I'm real in the sense that I have ten fingers, ten toes, and hair that's not ginger, but I'm not _really_ real." He wiggled his fingers at no one in particular. He laughed, a hollow sort that came from his throat. "I suspect she's starting to miss me, even though she says she isn't, and she says it's all in _my _head. He has a big blue box that opens with a snap of his fingers and sails among the stars, and I have a closed off reality that occasionally gets bothered by aliens. Wonderful aliens, but I'm stuck here, all the same. And you lot actually have to buy plane tickets to get anywhere! I'm stuck with my feet on the ground on a tiny, insignificant speck of a planet, and I'm not even real!" John Smith stopped for breath.

"I don't see how-," Arthur began, his narrow eyes becoming even narrower.

"But we can see you. And you look solid," a voice came from behind the point man and leader. A short woman stepped out, her wide eyes staring right into John Smith's. She adjusted the dark red scarf around her neck and offered him a half smile. Her voice was soft and entreating. "We don't need to plant the idea that you're real in your head."

John Smith frowned. He'd heard the edge in her voice, the calm tone that mothers use on their children when it's clear those children don't understand anything about the world. He realized she thought him mad—talking about another him out there among the stars in a banged-up police box as a spaceship... of course these people wouldn't believe him.

"When you look outside into the streets of Paris, what do you see? You see people, walking around, living their lives, and it's a beautiful thing. But _you _know there's more, there's something sinister and wonderful lurking under the surface, right in their minds, something they think it's private, but you know it's not. But if you told anyone, they'd never believe you," John Smith said. "That's me, exactly, except all the worlds and things I know are up there, in the stars. And some things just happen, and here I am, real and not real. But I need to convince myself that I _am_ real, or I'm going to lose her, and she's the only reason I'm here."

"How are you going to pay us?" Arthur looked up at the man who wasn't quite making sense, but who wished for something different than the usual client—he wished for satisfaction, for love, for recognition. He stole a sideways glance at Ariadne who was biting her lip and toying with her scarf. He could see it in her face: she wanted to help. She believed this strange man. Surprised, Arthur realized he did, too.

John Smith pulled a long, round, silver piece of hardware out of his pocket. He pointed it upward, and it emit a strange, electronic sound while one end lit up blue. "I have ways." He pocketed the strange tool and raised his eyebrows. "So, how do we get started?"

"Let me get this straight," Cobb interjected, "all you want us to do is to convince _you_ that _you're real_."

"Yep."

"And just existing isn't enough for you?"

"Let's put it this way. I'm a rather poorly made copy of another person, and I need to believe that I'm real."

"You're a clone?" Cobb wrinkled his nose and furrowed his eyebrows. He couldn't believe the conversation he was having, but it wasn't as if he could back out now. He'd shook the man's hand.

"Something like that, yeah." John Smith thought it best to not go into another long-winded speech about being a metacrisis copy of an alien named the Doctor.

"But if you think you're the real one of you, isn't there going to be a problem when he comes back? What were you made for? Harvesting organs? Is the real you suffering from some life-threatening disease, and he needs you for kidney transplants?" Eames, who had since been quiet, offered.

"You have no idea how far from the truth you are. I, I mean the real me, is going to be alive for a very, very long time. And it's impossible for him to come back here, even if he wanted to." John Smith remembered the look the Doctor had when they saw him re-entering the TARDIS for the last time at Bad Wolf Bay. The last person he'd gazed at was Rose Tyler, the girl who crossed universes to meet with him, and then he disappeared, leaving Rose behind with the metacrisis human Doctor whose only advantage over the real one was the ability to age. He personally thought Rose Tyler was the better deal, but that was a very human way to be thinking.

"So you want to be believe you're the real one?"

"No, that won't work. Then I'll wonder why I only have one heart, and why I don't regenerate. Not that I'm careless with the regenerations but recently, I only lasted one year on that one and who knows how long on this one." The last bit was muttered quickly, and the inception team missed it completely. "I just need to believe I'm more than just a clone."

"You want to believe you're a real boy, mate?" Eames asked, leaning back in his chair.

"Well, we're not going to be doing this job, whatever it is, here in Paris," Cobb muttered.

"I'm from Cardiff." John Smith almost laughed at his own words. From Cardiff? He used to have the whole universe and all of its wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff as his backyard, and now he was reduced to saying he was from Cardiff.

"That's a terrible place to be from," Eames said, tapping a beat out on his armrest. "But it's a good place as any to go on the run. Cardiff! No one will look for us there."

"Cardiff then. We'll all need to go separately," Cobb said.

"I have a flight out tonight," John Smith said, producing a ticket from his pocket. He hated planes. They were such a slow and inefficient way to travel. "Here's how you can contact me." He handed a piece of paper to Cobb, and then turned to leave, waving as he exited.

A man emerged from the shadows, a smirk on his round face. His wide eyes looked crazed. "Funny how these things work out, team. Our target just strolled in by himself, practically begging all of you to slither your way into his brain."

"You mean he's the guy you need the extraction from?" Cobb asked. He briefly wondered about the morality behind taking both of their requests, but he then reminded himself that he already worked on the wrong side of the law.

"It's like killing two birds with one stone, isn't it?" The man laughed, baring his perfectly straight teeth. "Or killing the same stupid bird twice. See you all in Cardiff."

"Good-bye, Mr. Saxon."


	2. Chapter 2: A Conversation

The Copy

Chapter 2: Conversation

Disclaimer: I own neither Inception nor Doctor Who.

Author's Note: I'm also not British, so the speaking style may be wrong. Tell me how it is. Please read and review!

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><p>Rose woke up, feeling the other side of the bed dip a little. She rolled over and leaned her head on her Doctor's shoulder. "Welcome back," she mumbled, her head still heavy from sleeping deeply. "I missed you."<p>

He brushed a dyed blonde bang from her eyes and settled in next to her. "Really." It wasn't really a question, but it wasn't an affirmation either. It was just a word he used to respond to her.

"Of course, really. I can't believe you went all the way to France without me. I'm not a good assistant anymore?" She snuggled in closer to him, rubbing her face in his pinstriped pajamas. She'd bought them for him because they matched the suit he always wore. The blue one, not the brown one with the trench coat. Whenever she pointed one out, he wouldn't say anything, just smile at her.

"You're fantastic. And brilliant."

"So are you." She rubbed her eyes. "I'm still sleepy."

"Me, too." Sleep was something he'd needed to get used to. Well, the vast amounts of it humans needed. Timelords slept, sure, but not nearly as much as he did. Maybe that's the side effect of having one's heart ripped out.

He listened to her breath slow into steady breathing, her head resting on his chest. He maneuvered her back onto her pillow; he couldn't quite breath when she lay there, as much as he liked having her close. _This_, John reminded himself, _is the life that he can't have, but you can. _But he wondered if it was a fair trade—the whole of the universe for Rose Tyler. It hadn't been for the Timelord Doctor; if it had, he would have stayed and stored himself away in a fob watch and fallen in love with Rose all over again. But John Smith was human, and humans built their lives around other humans.

He lay in bed, and the darkness swelled with his thoughts. He barely thought of himself as the Doctor anymore, even though Rose still called him that. But she also still had the TARDIS phone number programmed into her old mobile, and he'd noticed she always kept that phone charged, even though she had a new, Torchwood-issued phone.

He had something hidden away, too, but he couldn't tell Rose about it. Not if his attempt to grow it failed. As he pursued this line of thought, he too disappeared into the oblivion of sleep.

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><p>"This is nice," Ari said, as they settled into a window seats at a coffee shop.<p>

"Rose and I eat here often," John said. "Gets a bit boring after a while, but it's perfect for meetings. Humans never seem to pay attention to anyone else, do they?" He offered her a lopsided smile.

She blushed, unsure of how to approach this man. She'd been sent to figure out what made him tick, what his secrets were, anything that could make the job more personal. Arthur was meant to do research, but he couldn't unearth anything about this man. He might as well have been John Doe.

"Coffee. Nasty stuff," he said, taking a drink of the bitter liquid.

"Why do you drink it?"

"I have a theory that eventually I will enjoy this. One day."

"Have you been working on that theory your whole life?" Ari asked, sipping at her earl grey tea. She wrapped her chilled hands around the teacup, letting the warmth settle into them.

"Only about the last two years of it."

"Not long then."

"Not long at all."

They sat in silence, sharing a platter of biscuits set between them. After a while, John adjusted his glasses and raised an eyebrow. "You didn't call me here to eat biscuits and talk about overrated Earth beverages, did you?"

She shook her head. She was no good at being sneaky—her job was to build the worlds the team populated, not extract data from their subjects. That was Cobb's job. Or Arthur's. But she was sent to find out what she could, using her "womanly wiles." That's what Eames had called it anyway, right before Arthur smacked him over the head with a rolled up newspaper. "I'm not a bloody dog," Eames had protested. Arthur had mumbled something about how he'd never treat a dog that way. Ari giggled at the memory.

"Something funny?"

"Just... the team. How did you find us, anyway?"

"I'm clever."

He said it as if it were a fact, not as if he were bragging. She liked that.

"And since I _am _clever, I know this isn't a social call. Ask me exactly what you want to know. I used to have all the time in the universe, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore."

"Why don't you make sense?" she said, and then blushed. She'd spoken too quickly and without restraint.

He laughed. "The story is just about 900 years old, but I suppose the short of it is that I'm an alien. Well, not anymore. _Now_ I'm part human, part alien."

"But you look human."

"Actually, you look alien. Specifically, Timelord, which is what I am. Was. I never had this much trouble with tenses when I actually was a time traveler."

"You were a time traveler?"

"And space traveler. Time and space was my backyard. I could be in Italy for the Renaissance one day and then on an impossible planet circling a black hole the next. My life was very wibbly-wobbly, you see."

"Not really," Ari said. She finished off her cup of tea and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin.

"And yet you go into dreams like they're your personal playground, like it's normal. Who's to say that I'm _not _an alien?"

"You're crazy."

"Most definitely. That doesn't mean what I did wasn't real." He gazed off into the horizon. "I probably would have asked you to come with me, during that time I'd lost her." His words were soft, non-threatening.

"Is that what you do, kidnap people and then replace them with other people?" she asked.

"They come with me because they want to. And then they break my heart. It was lucky I used to have two. Now I just have the one, and it belongs to Rose Tyler." He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands in his lap. He fidgeted with them.

"Rose Tyler," Ari repeated, making a mental note of the name.

John Smith threw that lopsided smile at her. "Her life doesn't make any sense either, if you were going to do some research about it." He stood up and pulled on a navy blue coat he had hanging on the back of his chair. "Well, I'll be leaving now, Ms. Ariadne. I hope this chat helped a bit, but I don't see how it could have."

With that, he left her with a single name: Rose Tyler, and the assurance that researching this name would just lead to more mystery. She sighed. The team would be happy to find out that she'd learned absolutely nothing about anything. Just that their target was an alien who wasn't an alien anymore—at best, he was delusional.

At worst, he was telling the truth.


	3. Chapter 3: Visitors

**The Copy**

Chapter 3: Visitors

Disclaimer: I own neither Inception nor Doctor Who or any of the characters from them.

Author's Note: Please read and review if you have any comments. I hope you're enjoying reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it.

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><p>"Rose won't be back for a while," John Smith said, as he ushered the team into their Cardiff flat. "I figure here's as good a place as any to do it. If Rose comes back... well, she's seen weirder."<p>

"Weirder than a bunch of men and one woman asleep on your living room floor attached to a silver briefcase?" Arthur asked, laying the PASIV out on the table.

"Quite a bit weirder than that, yeah." He grinned at the dubious look Arthur gave him.

"Nice place you got here," Eames said, settling himself on a couch. "You sure your old lady won't mind if she comes back?"

"Best I can tell, she'll think this is some kind of new recreational activity. She may be angry, but she won't stay angry for long."

Ariadne could see why. The inception team was made up of ridiculously handsome men, and their new client was giving all of them a run for their money, even Arthur. She stole a side glance at Arthur, who was also looking back at her. He raised an eyebrow, and she could feel her cheeks becoming hot. He looked away first, and she felt a pit form in her stomach. She couldn't quite pinpoint why, but she felt a bit guilty.

The rest of the team wandered inside with Yusuf bringing up the rear. He closed the door behind him, and pulled out a concoction in a vial. "One thing to remember, Mr. Smith. Don't die," he said.

"I don't make a habit of it."

"Well, what we're going to do is-," Ariadne began, but Cobb cut her off.

"Actually, the less you know, the better," he said.

John Smith looked around at the assembled team and bit his lip. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Are you pulling out, Mr. Smith?" Arthur asked.

Eames stifled a snort. Arthur glared at him over the barebones file he was rifling through. He'd managed to gather some information John Smith, but none of it made sense. All of the evidence he found, along with the nonsense that Ariadne had gathered, pointed to the conclusion that John Smith shouldn't exist at all. And yet here they were, attempting to convince him that he was, in fact, real. At least all of their other jobs were pretty straightforward. They knew what they needed to do. But even the side job for Mr. Saxon didn't make any sense.

"Like I said the other day. I need to convince myself of something, and, as far as I can tell, I need you. But I'm quite sure, no matter what you've actually done in the past, you haven't met anyone like me. Or been in a brain like mine."

"People are all the same. They think they've got something important locked away, but no matter how dark their secret is, it's nothing we haven't seen before," Cobb said. "Everyone thinks their brain is the most complex with the most twisted secrets."

"Even you." Again, he didn't phrase the sentence as a question, rather a statement.

Everyone in the room let the awkward silence settle in around them.

"Well, if no one's going to back out, I'd suppose we'd better get started." John Smith clapped his hands and sat next to the coffee table where the PASIV lay. "Right then. If you're all going to be wandering around in my mind, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm the Doctor. Nice to meet you."

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><p>"Good morning, Miss Tyler. Where's the fiancee?" the Torchwood receptionist asked, barely looking up from her computer.<p>

"Hello Linda. He had a bit to do, I suppose," Rose answered. "Mentioned that some mates were going to come over to the flat." She added the last bit to convince herself that something wasn't odd about the arrangement. Usually the Doctor would come with her to work to see if there were any alien crises facing London.

"Seems like there's a rogue time traveler somewhere in Cardiff."

Rose stood there, waiting for more information out of Linda, but none seemed to be forthcoming. She sighed and made her way to her father's office. It seemed strange how quickly she'd taken to calling him "dad." Not in the "you've married my mum" kind of way, but she really regarded him as her father. But he wasn't. Not really. Her father died as she sat by and watched, comforting him until he closed his eyes for the last time.

"Are you just going to stand in the doorway and look vacant, love?"

Rose snapped out of her reverie. "What have you got for me then?"

He scratched at the back of his balding head and grinned. "We picked up some time residue on that timey-wimey detectory... thing. Can't your boy pick a better name for it?"

"What? Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey detector not good enough for you, Dad?"

"It's a bit of a mouthful. Anyway, it's actually picked up a signal. We think it may be a rogue time traveler somewhere... there." He pointed to a square mile on the map.

"And you want me to find him?"

"Shouldn't be too hard. Just take the detector with you. Nice of John-"

"The Doctor," Rose corrected.

"Nice of _the Doctor_ to make it so portable." Pete picked up the timey-wimey detector off his desk. It looked rather like a home made bomb attached to an alarm clock, what with all of the wires springing out of it.

"See you then, Dad." She took the detector from him and began following the indicator lights. She assumed that was how it worked—the Doctor's ramblings occasionally had little meaning to her, but his devices were usually based in some kind of common sense, even if she had to squint real hard to find it.

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><p>"What the hell is this?" Arthur said, taking in his surroundings. The countryside mansion he'd meant to dream was perched near the edge of a jagged cliff which overlooked a sinister green ocean. The sky crackled with lightning that bounced between dark gray clouds. As best as he could tell, the sky was also tinged green. A sharp wind blew around them, ushering a fog that seemed to be made of tiny knives.<p>

"Isn't this yours?" Eames asked, folding his arms across his chest as an insufficient armor against the cold. Because they'd expected a country manor in the late spring, their clothes did not match their need in this alien landscape. "I must say it's not what I had expected coming from you."

"But this isn't _anything_ like the practice runs I did."

Ariadne began to worry. Arthur was visibly shaken—the point man rarely showed any kind of emotion on a job, especially one that showed weakness. He was supposed to keep everyone together. "It'll be okay, right? It's just some kind of glitch, or...," Ariadne began, trying to think of some kind of other explanation. "I mean, this can't have been the first time..."

Cobb ignored her as he surveyed the area. He couldn't make out anything, except the shadowy figures of the team and the outline of the mansion. Except that one shadowy figure was missing.

Mr. Smith was not with them.


	4. Chapter 4: Friends

**The Copy**

Chapter 3: Friends

Author's Note: This chapter's a bit slower than the others; I'm trying to set things up here! Please read and review! :)

Disclaimer: I own neither Inception nor Doctor Who. This is all for fun.

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><p>Rose hit the timey-wimey detector because it had started to click and whirr uncontrollably. Every indicator light flashed at once. Her search for the rogue time-traveler led her to the middle of Cardiff, where, in the other universe, a Slitheen had become governor to orchestrate a catastrophe that would blow the Earth into bits merely so that she could sell it off as space junk.<p>

"That's definitely not Earth tech," a voice came from behind her.

She spun around, coming face-to-face with a man in a long black trench coat. "Jack!"

"Do I know you? Sorry. Sometimes all of those crazy nights all get jumbled up here." He pointed a finger to his head. "But I don't think I would forget someone as pretty as you." He flashed a winning Jack Harkness smile, and Rose felt herself a bit weak at the knees.

"You wouldn't happen to be my rogue time traveler, would you?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Is that what this is for?" Jack ripped the timey-wimey detector from her hands. As he did so, it began to emit a high-pitched squeal.

"Blimey. What do you think the Doctor did that for?" She snatched it away from him, and it immediately calmed down. She turned it around in her hands, attempting to find an off switch, but if the Doctor had installed one, it seemed to elude her.

"Who's the Doctor?"

Rose was startled by the question, but then remembered this Captain Jack had never met the either of them before. "Just some bloke, you know." The timey-wimey detector continued to emit high-pitched beeps and refused to quit blinking. "Now you stop that right now," Rose commanded it. All of its activity ceased. "Right then. Captain Jack, yeah? Why are you here in Cardiff?"

"I'd like to know how you know my name when I haven't had the pleasure of introducing myself _or _had the pleasure of formally making your acquaintance." He handed her a piece of paper for inspection.

"I think your psychic paper is broken. It says you're Captain Jack Harkness, and you enjoy long walks along the Thames. Bit daft, don't you think? Long walks along the Thames."

He flashed a sheepish smile at being found out. "Well then, let's see what it says for you. Rose Tyler. Currently engaged defender of the Earth. That's a mouthful of a title, isn't it, Miss Defender of the Earth?"

"You fancy some fish and chips?"

"Sounds wonderful." He held out an arm for her to grasp, and she took it. "Nice to meet you, Rose Tyler."

"Nice to meet you again, Captain Jack."

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><p>"We have to get inside," Arthur shouted, pointing toward the mansion. "It should be better in there."<p>

The team forced their way toward the outline of the mansion as lightning continued to crackle in the clouds above. Arthur could feel his control of the situation slipping, and he bit hard into his lip to remind himself that he needed to stay focused. He could feel the clouds pressing back at him—they wanted to send lightning bolts straight at him, ridding themselves of the dreamer. He'd experienced projections fighting back. He'd never experienced the _weather_ pushing back.

Arthur threw the door open, and held it as the rest of the team hurried in. He closed it behind him. Taking in his surroundings, he breathed a sigh of relief. The mansion was just as he had meant to dream it. Modern paintings hung on the black and gold pin-striped wallpaper, and the carpeting had a familiar spring to it.

"It's definitely you," Ariadne said. From her tone of voice, he wasn't sure if this was a compliment or not. He hoped it was.

Arthur ushered them into the front room, where a fire roared in the corner. A burgundy loveseat faced a low wooden coffee table. The finish was a dark red, and it gleamed in the glow of the firelight. A black cat lay curled up next to the hearth, breathing slowly. Ari bent down to pet it. It purred and rubbed against her knee, and then it climbed into her lap and curled up there.

"Cute cat," Eames said.

"My family had a cat when I was little. Is that a problem?" Arthur asked, a bit defensive. In fact, his family never had a cat when he was little, but he'd always wanted one. A small, black one, almost exactly like the one curled up in Ari's lap. He turned his back on Ari and continued to glare at Eames.

"Not really, but the cat seems to be rather taken with our lovely lady here."

"Shut up, Romeo and Juliet. Shouldn't we be more interested in where our Dr. Smith went?" Cobb asked, rubbing his forehead. "He couldn't have gone far. It's nuts out there. He'd be dead instantly."

"Wonderful. Now I suppose you'll be telling me you want us to shoot ourselves in the head so we can all take a stroll in limbo, which, as far as I can remember, is populated with leftovers from your brain. Oh, and let's not forget Saito," Eames muttered. "Yeah, I really want to take a turn down there."

"I'll do the honors of shooting you," Arthur said, pulling the PASIV out from beneath the table.

"Do you two hear that?" Cobb asked, a finger to his lips like he was shushing a couple of unruly kindergartners.

A soft music swelled around them, as if a million voices were chiming in to create one choir, but they were all joining individually. The music was soft and beautiful, but beneath its gorgeous surface lurked something dark. It was like a siren song, a beckoning to the team to come crash their ship upon a jagged cliff.

"What the hell is that?" Eames asked, breaking their silence.

"We have to leave, _now_." The three men spun around to face the hallway. Ariadne stood in the door of the parlor with John Smith beside her. The black cat milled around at her feet.

"How... how did you get there?" Arthur asked. He was almost positive there was no way for Ari to pass from the hearth to the hallway without them noticing.

"Never mind that now," John Smith broke in. "We need to get out of this house. The clouds, well, they're not really clouds, but they are. Anyway, the clouds are going to trap us using a net of that electricity you see buzzing around up there. And then they will slither their way through the house, through the electric system, since I can tell that you, being as clever and detailed as you are, made sure there was some kind of electrical system even in your dream world."

"You mean those clouds are your projections?"

"I said never mind. No questions. Just follow me. Allons-y!" He ran up the staircase and onto the roof.

They followed him. It crossed all of their minds that they were getting _closer_ to the sentient clouds rather than _further_, but he seemed so sure of himself. Cobb just hopped that giving their trust to this man didn't ensure their imminent demise and extended stay in limbo.

They reached the roof. On it stood what seemed to be a blue telephone box.

"But that's not part of the..."

"It's a projection," John Smith said.

"What's an old-fashioned police box doing there?" Eames asked as John Smith ushered them inside.

They walked inside, drinking in the orange and brown-tinged TARDIS interior.

"I'd ask why you didn't say it's bigger on the inside, but I suppose it's because you think this is all still part of the dream world. Existed in my world, too, but well, not anymore." John Smith put on his glasses and peered at the control console. "Since I'm guessing this dream is my friend Arthur's, we're confined to the cliff and the mansion. As long as we get out of here. Allons-y."

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><p>Rose popped a chip into her mouth as she listened to Captain Jack ramble on. She'd asked about the empty child who wandered about England with his face fused to a gas mask, but he had no recollection of that. He did admit to trying to find a time agent to throw a warship at, but none crossed his path. So, he abandoned World War II England.<p>

"And you came to twenty-first century England instead?" Rose asked.

"I'm tracking down a group of rogue dream extractors."

"Dream extraction?" Rose echoed.

"They go inside people's minds and take their secrets. The deepest, darkest secrets you have here." Jack leaned over the table and tapped Rose's temple. "What you think is there and hidden away from the world, they can just snatch it from you." He made a grabbing motion with his hands.

"What business do you have with them, then?"

"They made a very powerful and very rich engineering company a bit angry. Not a bit, actually. A lot."

"So, what? Are you working for the company and going to turn them in?" Rose was aware that the Jack before her was not the Jack she'd known in the other world. As far as she knew, this Jack could be a cold-blooded mercenary with a taste for blood. She highly doubted that though, seeing as how he was just as much a flirt here as he was there.

"Just the opposite. I want to find them and shake their hands."


	5. Chapter 5: It's about Time

The Copy

Chapter 5: It's about Time

Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait guys, the end of August/beginning of September was nuts. I've also seemed to have lost my notes in the move out of my apartment, so please bear with me. Just a bit more talking and then we'll get to some action scenes.

Disclaimer: I own neither Inception nor Doctor Who.

* * *

><p>The TARDIS projection shook as it landed, protesting with its patented TARDIS sound. Well, it would be patented if the Doctor had ever gotten around to actually filing a patent. He wondered if that was how it worked, patent filing. Maybe he'd do it in America if he ever had the time. He had all of time and space really... He broke off his thoughts. The familiar feel of the TARDIS console under his fingers was making him delusional. He couldn't stay here in Arthur's makeshift world of countryside manors and ominous cliff faces.<p>

"What did you do?" Arthur asked, his eyebrows knit together.

"We moved." Ari said. Her fingers trailed along the control panel, and it hummed to her touch. What the Doctor called the TARDIS was too strange for Arthur. Even his impossible architecture was structured and sensible.

Eames frowned. The blue police box definitely wasn't Arthur's doing. Who ever heard of a police box?

"Might be some trouble outside," the Doctor said.

"That didn't answer any of our questions," Cobb muttered, leaning against a pole. "And what the hell is this anyway?"

"She's my TARDIS."

"Like a ship?"

"I suppose you could say that." He frowned and scratched the back of his head. "We'd better go to sleep now. Arthur, the TARDIS itself should protect you despite all the nasty alien projections outside. Just don't open the door."

"Seriously? That's your advice? _Don't open the door_? Don't you think _they_ might be able to open the door to a phone booth?" Ari asked, spinning around to face the Doctor.

"I'd imagine they wouldn't be able to." Just at the moment, the party was thrown to one side of the TARDIS and then the other. "Of course, they can get to the outside of the police box. That's the problem when it's smaller on the outside. Easier to throw her around a bit." The Doctor scrambled to his feet and patted the console. "Sorry, old girl."

"Yes, I feel completely safe in your head," Arthur muttered, settling himself in a seat. His eyes darted around as he looked for a way to anchor himself down.

"Nothing more dangerous than usual here, right Arthur?" Cobb asked.

"Time for some shut eye?" Eames put in. "If I fall asleep on this hard ground, I'm definitely going to have a crick in the neck in the morning."

"The TARDIS does have bedrooms," the Doctor said, pointing up a spiral staircase that seemed to disappear into the ship's walls.

"But the PASIV..." Arthur said, getting up. It was still in the mansion and now he'd have to fight his way back up there to get it. How careless could he be?

"Ari, you were somewhere you won't supposed to be. Earlier. In the mansion. You were at the fireplace and then you weren't." The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair. "You ended up _behind_ us. How did that happen? And when you walked in here, you said 'We moved.' You were answering his question, not really asking another one. Is this your first time on the Tardis?"

Ari shook her head.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow and grinned. "Well, isn't that interesting?"

* * *

><p>"You found the time traveler?" Pete asked, nodding toward Jack.<p>

"He's Captain Jack Harkness, rogue time agent. We've met before, in the other world. I guess it wasn't exactly this Captain Jack, but basically the same. Except this one didn't completely ruin England during World War II."

"I did that, huh?" Jack asked.

"Threw a bit of space junk at me and the Doctor and nearly destroyed the planet with a bunch of nanogens."

"That's a punishable offense," Pete said. "Of course, that wasn't you." He stood up and gazed out the large picture window that overlooked the United Kingdom. "What are we going to do with him?"

"He wants to work with Torchwood."

"What's Torchwood? Is that a government thing? I don't do governments," Jack said.

"What the hell is that?" Pete squinted at the horizon. "It's some kind of blue flickering, way out there." He pressed his finger up to the window as if that would somehow help the other two in the room locate it.

Rose perked up at the description, and almost went over to look. She was interrupted by the phone ringing.

"Hello. This is Rose Tyler. You've reached TI. Have you tried turning it off and on again?" Rose asked. It was the common way of answering the phone. Torchwood Institute was listed as only "TI" in the phonebook, and they'd answer as if they were an IT department.

"I'm trying to reach the Torchwood Institute," said a gravelly voice at the other end of the line. It sounded automated and almost human, but not really either.

"This is Torchwood."

"We understand you or one of your members know how to reach Dominic Cobb and his team of dream extractors."

"We don't know any Mr. Cobb."

Jack crept closer to Rose, pressing his ear up to the other side of the phone. Rose pushed him away and put the conversation on speaker.

"Dominic Cobb and the rest of his team. Eames. Arthur. And possibly a young architect student studying in France."

Jack frantically began flapping about and pointing at the phone. He mouthed, "That's THEM. THEM. THEM. THEM." He punctuated each silent "them" with a hand jab at the phone.

"What?" Rose mouthed back. She got the "them" part, but she wasn't sure if he was talking about the dream extractors or the people trying to get the dream extractors.

"Bad guys!" Jack mouthed.

"Excuse me?" the voice on the phone asked.

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, I don't know anyone named that."

"It's come to our attention that a man named John Smith, from your facility, has recently come into contact with these criminals."

Pete came closer to the phone now, too.

"I don't know anything about that," Rose said.

"Consider this a warning, Rose Tyler. We _will _find them and eradicate them. And you, too, if you don't cooperate. Or should I say, we'll eradicate Mr. Smith seeing as he's not quite immortal anymore."

The phone line went dead, and the phone went hot in her hands. She dropped it, shaking her hand to get rid of the burning. Then the whole phone exploded into a lick of flames that quickly extinguished itself.

"Well, that's a message if I ever saw one," Jack said, peering at the phone. "Sounds like fun, whatever it is."

"Dad, how can they _know _about him?" Rose demanded. "He, well, the other him, doesn't exist here. It would rip time and space apart. _How can they know_?"

Pete Tyler shook his head and shrugged. "What kind of mess has your boy gotten into now?"

* * *

><p>"Was anyone else on the TARDIS when you were here the first time?" The Doctor asked Ari.<p>

She shook her head. "Well, just you."

He nodded. "Everyone needs to hide. Go upstairs and turn left, or right, or I don't care, but just get out of the control room. There's a karaoke lounge up there, somewhere. And a pool. Love a pool party. Just _get out_."

The men nodded and turned up the stairs, still a bit bewildered by how strange the dream was.

"You too, Ari."

She stood there and bit her lip.

"Something you wanted to say?"

"Was your life always this dangerous?"

"Sometimes it wasn't so bad." He forced out a grin.

Ari bit her lip and nodded. "It was fun, though. What happened. What will happen. It's a bit dizzy in my head."

"That's time travel for you. Even time travel in Arthur's very limited dream world will do that for you."

She started going up the stairs and stopped. "Doctor?"

He glanced over at her.

"You don't need to change for anyone." She finished her climb up the metal spiral staircase to join the rest of her team.

* * *

><p>AN: Please read and review. Next chapter will be Ari as the companion. Thanks for bearing with me and my slightly long absence. I promise there will be action in the next chapter! I just wanted to get this one out so you guys can have something to read. :)


	6. Chapter 6: Old Friends

**The Copy**

Chapter 6: Old Friends

Disclaimer: I do not own, nor do I claim to own, either Doctor Who or Inception. I also make no money from this endeavor.

Author's Note: I don't know if anyone's still interested in this since it's been so long since I last updated. In the mean time, I've moved, so the original notes I had for this fic have disappeared. I don't know _exactly _what this means for the fic, except that internal logic might go haywire for the next couple of chapters while I try to fix things. And for this, I apologize. Maybe when I finish the whole thing, I'll do a complete overhaul. But for now, please enjoy, and take my sincere apologies. Oh, and yes, that was an IT Crowd reference in the last chapter.

* * *

><p>The Doctor sent the TARDIS back in time five minutes, landing at the front door of the opulent mansion Arthur's mind had conjured. She flew just like he remembered, which was unsurprising, seeing as how she was a projection of his own mind. He'd have to keep reminding himself of this—the TARDIS was a project and nothing more. He'd left that all behind.<p>

He strolled out of the TARDIS to the front door. Through the glass of the mansion's door, he could make out Ari's back turned to him. The men were talking in front of her, but it doesn't look like she was saying much. He briefly wondered if they treat her like that all the time, or if she just had very little to say.

He remembered something then. A light tap at the door, and Ari turning around surprised. Memories were strange like that, rewiring themselves or highlighting events that, at the time, seemed unimportant.

So he tapped at the door, and Ari spun around. She walked over cautiously, abandoning the men and their (important?) conversation. It was only moments ago, yet he couldn't remember if it really was all that important. Probably something about dreams.

Ari opened the door, and she began to let out a yelp of surprise. He placed a finger at his lips, and she stifled her sound of surprise. She turned her head around at the other Doctor and raised an eyebrow quizzically. He shrugged and made a jerking motion with his head, indicating he wanted to talk to her outside.

She shrugged, too, and followed him out.

"So what's this about? Are you a projection of yourself... or something?" Ari asked. "You have an evil twin, and I'm talking to him? Probably means I shouldn't have just blindly followed you out the door."

"No, it's me. And that's me. Just... a little later in time."

"Huh?"

"Time travel. Come on, follow me." The Doctor turned toward the TARDIS, raising his hand to snap his fingers at the door.

"Time travel? Arthur, as much as I love him, is _way _too linear for that."

The Doctor stopped mid-snap in order to look at Ari. Red crept up her neck and cheeks as she realized what she'd just said. "You love him then?"

"It's a figure of speech. You know, like I would say the same thing about Eames. Just a figure of speech."

The Doctor snapped his fingers, and the TARDIS opened her doors for them. Ari, meanwhile, continued to babble on while she followed him into the strange blue box. Her talking stopped mid-sentence (one in which she was _insisting _that she'd only been talking about brotherly love if she were even talking about love at all) as she entered the control room.

"Definitely not something Arthur thought up, is it?" she asked.

"It's a projection."

"So this exists? In the real world? A funny blue box that's..."

"...bigger on the inside," the Doctor finished for her. "Yes, it exists. Well, no, it doesn't. Not in this particular universe." He leaned against the control panel. Ari watched as all conviction flushed out of him, as if the control panel was the only thing allowing him to support himself.

"How many universes are there?"

"So many." He closed his eyes. For a brief moment, he looked older, ancient even. Then his eyes snapped open. "Never mind that. We need to close up a loop."

He began pulling gadgets and flipping switches all over the control panel. Ari wondered if he knew what he was doing or if he was just fiddling with it.

Then the TARDIS shook violently, throwing them both to the ground.

* * *

><p>Rose Tyler placed a small hearing aid in her ear and tucked the laser gun away into her jacket. Her Doctor, even half human and with enough bloodlust to eradicate the whole Dalek race, still preferred not to use guns and would have been extremely disapproving of her. If he were around, of course, which he wasn't.<p>

"Do I get one of those?" Captain Jack asked, flashing a winning smile.

"That Captain Jack flirty nonsense doesn't do anything for me, yeah?"

He shrugged apologetically; his face looked like a puppy's who's just been caught eating out of the cookie jar—not apologetic at all, but sad he got caught.

"You can have this one." Rose pulled a gun from the wall. A silver number so small that it could fit in one of Captain Jack's hands twice. She waited for his bemused reaction but was instead surprised with the exact opposite one.

"This is great! It exactly matches the one I'm hiding...," he paused for a moment, carefully choosing his words, "...somewhere."

"Yeah, I'd like to see that." She trailed her tongue over her teeth thoughtfully.

"I'm sure. But would 'your boy' like that?"

"I don't know. You kissed him once."

"Any kisses he gets from you would pale in comparison to one kiss from Captain Jack Harkness."

"You wish! We should go now, back to my flat." Rose chuckled. In any other circumstances, she'd sound like a seductress. Which wasn't a bad idea. "We should act friendly on the way there. Flirty an' stuff. It'll be our cover."

"Do we need cover?"

"You heard that phone call."

Jack nodded, his face suddenly becoming serious.

Rose interpreted this to be second-guessing, a backing out. She couldn't blame him, not really. "It's okay if you want to quit, you know."

Jack laughed, his smile completely erasing the flicker of seriousness. "Never, milady." He held out an arm to her.

She wove her own arm through his. "Milord."

They walked out into the streets, laughing and flirting. After a few minutes, she leaned into him, her head close to his.

"I think we have a friend over," she whispered. She'd been hearing footsteps perfectly matched to their own through the listening device she had placed in her ear.

Jack caught on, and continued the flirting. "I hope it's not Midge. Her boyfriend's so overbearing."

"Naw, not her."

They flirted for a bit longer, and Rose guided Jack in a large circle, far from the flat she shared with the Doctor. It wasn't any use though. Their one shadow had multiplied into many, and Rose could almost taste the impending confrontation in the air.

"You might want to take that gun out of whatever hiding place it's in," she said. "But don't draw just now."

"Noted," Jack answered.

They both placed their hands in their jackets as a man stepped out of the shadows. And another. And another. And yet more.

"Didn't want this to be too easy," Jack said, whipping out his gun.

"Just an ordinary day for me."

* * *

><p>"I wish you could reason with those cloud projections," Ari managed to spit out as the TARDIS was thrown to its side again. "This is definitely a <em>not <em>an advantage of it being bigger on the inside."

The Doctor held onto a railing to keep himself from falling the length of the TARDIS. "I can't just stroll up to my subconscious and go, ''Ello. How're you doing then? Would you like a spot of tea?' now can I?"

"Maybe you're having relationship problems because you're a total wise ass."

"Yes, I can see why you're so endearing to our friend Arthur." The Doctor spoke loudly, hoping that his voice carried to whatever corner of the TARDIS they party had retreated to.

"Leave Arthur out of this!"

"I'm going to try to land on the roof."

"Yeah, take us closer to the homicidal clouds, why don't you? Why don't you just land in the _house_?"

The Doctor didn't answer her and managed to land five minutes into the future right on the rooftop. "Now you have to go get them."

"What, I have to go outside? And does that mean there's now two of me and-"

"Just go."

The Doctor watched her leave. He was simultaneously in the TARDIS and outside of it, and crossing his timeline is a definite no-no. But maybe in dreams, it works differently. Maybe Arthur would fix it, subconsciously. But never mind. They had other things to attend to and worry about.

* * *

><p>Rose and Jack found a low wall to hide behind. They avoided shot after shot, and occasionally returned fire when the shots died down. "What the hell did you do to piss off Cobol?" Jack asked, poking his head above the wall to peek only to have a bullet careen an inch over his head.<p>

"How do you know it isn't you?"

They continued like this, the smell of gunpowder hanging thick in the air. Then the familiar sound, the _vworp_, she called it, rung through the air.

"What the hell is that?" Jack asked.

Rose's heart skipped a beat. She knew that sound. It played through her dreams constantly, and she was sure it played through her Doctor's as well.

Before her, the blue box materialized, and out stepped a young man. A lanky, skinny young man with a face resembling something like a foot. An attractive-ish foot, but a foot nonetheless. A foot wearing tails and a top hat. And he was definitely Not Ginger, but the rude hadn't made itself out of his system.

"Doctor?"

The young man spun around, and his eyes met Rose's.

"Oh dear. This can't be good, can it? All the walls in the universes collapsing open themselves. But for what reason? The last time this happened, you nearly put all the stars in the sky out. Shame on you, Rose Tyler." He didn't get to finish his little tirade since a bullet managed to put a smoking hole through his top hat.

"That's not charming _at all_," he snapped at the unknown gunman. "Since this seems to be an unsafe place, how about having a bit of a chat _inside _the TARDIS. Where it's safe. Except to bobby pins. I really must get that fixed."

Jack was a bit incredulous about how much a wooden box could protect them from gunshots, but Rose ushered him into what she considered her second home. The TARDIS.

A woman, red-haired and leggy, spun around. "Who are they, then, Doctor?" the woman demanded.

And who is _she_? Rose thought as an involuntary and (she knew) completely unjustified jealousy rippled through her.


End file.
